House Has Been Home For Most Of Her 112 Years

SANFORD — At 112, Ada Dennis has lived in the same house since 1935, and she plans on staying there.

So although she moves with a walker and needs the assistance of her son and daily visits from a nurse, Dennis said ''there is nothing like home sweet home.''

Born in 1879, Dennis worked most of her life as a cook and a cleaning woman. She was 54 years old when Franklin Roosevelt moved into the White House in 1933. She was 71 by the time television had made its first widespread appearance in American homes by 1950. When John F. Kennedy was assassinated she was past 80. At 102, she married her last husband.

Through it all, she has lived a quiet life in a clapboard house in Sanford's Georgetown community, where she still settles herself before the piano to play gospel tunes.

''It's God's grace,'' she said, that has allowed her to live this long. When asked, she gladly gives an impassioned rendition of the Lord's Prayer.

''All my life,'' she said, ''I did the right things.''

Pierre Abularrage, a social worker with Paragon Home Health Care, helps oversee Dennis' care. He said she's in ''remarkably good'' health, adding ''she is a good example for other elderly people that they can live at home.''

Dennis is able to stay in her home through a variety of state and federally financed agencies that provide health care, transportation and home delivered meals. Medicare pays the costs.

Being able to stay at home not only is better emotionally for older people like Dennis, it costs less than a nursing home.

After a hospital stay last year, Dennis was moved briefly to a nursing home. But, her son Leslie Gager said, ''she just cried every day and talked about how she wanted to come home.''

She seems to be doing well now and is looking forward to her 113th birthday on March 27.